In Pursuit of Wisdom

I didn't see mush news on the web about Bangladesh Under 19 defeating Pakistan Under 19 in a ODI series last week by a 3-2 margin. Bangladesh lost first 2 games and won the last 3 games consecutively. The series was hosted in Pakistan. The only test between these 2 teams ended in a draw . http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/ARCHIVE/2007-08/OTHERS/BDESH-U19_IN_PAK/ Now Srilanka Under 19 is visiting Bangaldesh and so far they are level with Bangaldesh 1-1 in the 5 ODI series as Bangladesh U-19 won the 1st ODI and Srilanka U-19 won the 2nd ODI. I believe all the journalists and bloggers are so overwhelmed with India's 1-0 test series win in India last week that nothing else got focus to them. Ganguly had a dream 2007 in terms of cricket year and was awarded man of the series. I am expecting him to get the palyer of the year award for 2007.

Last weekend we went to Clear Lake for a quick tour. I, Shusmita and our 1 year old son Ahyan was joined by our friend Nitol and Liju. Our friend Muthu Prakash joined us in our resort WorldMark for Wyndham the following night. As I always say that the best part of living in America is the long drives like this. We started around 8:30 PM Friday night (30th Nov) and came back Sunday evening (2nd Dec). The first night we reached very late so next day morning we went out to sight seeing (circling around the whole lake) just a little earlier than noon. At night we made barbequee and Prakash reached around 10:30 PM at night. More of our friends from Fremont were supposed to join us but they had to cancel the program at the last moment due to their other involvements. Sunday while returning, we went to Napa Premium Outlet first and did shopping for our upcoming New York visit this month. While coming Liju drove the car and while going back Prakash took Nitol in his car and Liju again drove ...

Very Severe Cyclonic Storm Sidr Hits Bangladesh at Nov 15th early morning with winds blowing at 250 km/h and gusts of 305 km/h.The storm from Bay of Bengal caused large scale evacuation and after it hit the SouthWest part of Bangladesh, so far 2388 death has been reported. This storm is at decisive as 1991 and 1970 cyclones and the death toll is rising in every hours report. I have tried a lot to contact my family back home and could get them only the day before after 28 hours electricity black out finished. All of my relatives and friends are fine as most of them are in Dhaka, although the storm went through 85 miles away from Dhaka with weakened force by the time it reached the center of the country. Pray for Bangladesh. We have seen a major flood this year and now this one - too much in one single year.

Today I got an email from a sports journalist and chess fide master of Belgrade asking the meaning of my name Ashik . The word Ashik, derives from Arabic word Asheq ( عاشق ), and means the one who is in love . Zaman is derived from Zamana , an Urdu/Hindo word that means the age or time . So Ashik Uzzaman means one who is in love with his time . In other words, Ashik Uzzaman is the lover of the age . I live in information age, its my profession as well and I love it. So to me my name resembles that I am the lover of information age.

I have been using the newer version of GMail for the last few days and I like it very much. The first thing I noticed is that it's faster than the older version. But the feature that I liked most is the Filter Messages like these action. Its wonderful and is saving me so many more minutes everyday. The other new action Mute takes out the message from my inbox, but I am not sure whether it archives it or deletes it do what with it. The replies by you are marked with a > sign in a discussion thread to easily distinguish between your responses vs the others responses. And of course the Contacts section has changed significantly in terms of visual appearance compared to other parts of the GMail. The embedded google talk now gives optionto show the list of contacts to chat in different sizes - tiny, small, medium, large. MicroSoft made its Windows Live Hotmail available for general registration. I tool my new live id ashik@live.com . At first look, I think the calendar, calendar...

I joined Salesforce in San Francisco yesterday as a Software Engineer. So far it has been a wonderful and competitive corporate environment. My manager took me to a Thai Cuisine for lunch and explained me how Salesforce is growing so fast! I will be probably be assigned to AppStore and Phoenix projects soon after I finish my admin training next week. Last Friday (2nd Nov) my Philips colleague gave me a farewell lunch at Red Kwali in Milpitas. Although Jeff could not attend it and instead gave me a phone call to say good bye; everyone else in Philips Milpitas R&D team joined that - Imtiyaz, Brian, Dan, Jade, David, Tho, Ba, Franca. It was a nice time with them. In that evening I, Shusmita, Ahyan, Nitol, Ezaz, Shaki and Mahi started for Klamath Falls, Oregon with our hired 7-seater Minivan. We reached the Trendwest Resort there at 3:30 PM. The long drive was quite wonderful with all of us singing by turns. The next day (Saturday) we went to Crater Lake first. We returned in the eveni...

We survived a 5.6 earth quake a few hours ago. It started at 8:05 PM and stayed for 20 seconds. The center of the earthquake was North San Jose and even in Fremont we felt it so strongly. I was playing with Ahyan and Shusmita was in kitchen when saw the whole housing started shaking violently. We gathered together in the middle of the living room until it was over and went out of the house to join many other people in the street after a while to avoid any follow up earth quake. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071031/ap_on_re_us/california_earthquake This is our second earth quake within a year. The earlier one was not as violent as today's one although in richter scale that was 4.8 or so. Our neighbor Kathy/Preston and Tofael Bhai were shocked to have this experience. Preston was like - Welcome to California, the place of earth quake. Update: 5 Minutes earlier 31st October Wednesday 3:52 PM, we had another earthquake which I believe is the aftershock of yesterday's one. It was mil...

Ahyan's first birthday went 12th of this month. Due to Eid-ul-Azha at 13th of this month, we celebrated the party at the following weekend at 20th October. Around 65 guests came in Chandni Restaurant in Newark. We booked the hall's one portion from noon to 4 PM. All the invitations were mostly maintained by evite. The birthday theme was Finding Nemo and all the baloons, table cloths, goody bag and the wonderful tiramisu cake wre decorated with this theme. Ahyan got som many beautiful gifts and love from all. We missed my friends and relatives back home in Bangladesh. This is the irony of living abroad that even happiest moments are touched with sadness. Here are some of the pictures from the party that Nitol uploaded in his picasa web album. http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/AhyanSBirthday

Twenty20 World Cup 2007 just started and we are already with many exciting results. A few hours earlier, very late night (or early morning) my time, I followed Bangladesh vs West Indies match where Ashraful's record fastest half-century (61) and Aftab's 62* knocked West Indies out of the tournament while Bangladesh proceeds to second round. Great job done my country! Here are few links to follow on this. http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/twenty20wc/engine/current/match/287857.html http://worldtwenty20.yahoo.com/videos/wiba1309.html http://rezwanul.blogspot.com/2007/09/hurray-bangladesh-won.html http://www.banglacricket.com/

I have been recently subject to victim of Travel Life Go Direct/Florida Direct/Lucid online fraudulant circle. I recieved a vacation package offer early June from Florida Direct and enrolled myself in a 30 day trial. During the registration, they took my bank account information and sent me the details of vacation information which are operated by Travel Life Go Direct . They also offered me an optional phone service from Lucid . I agreed to try those as well. But once I recieved the package in a week or so, I found those are not interesting. So I called Florida Direct at June 20 (approximately 2 weeks and still within the 30 day trial period) and cancelled my membership from them. Then I called the Travel Life Go Direct number and Lucid Phone service that I found in the papers mailed to me just in case to make sure I don't get any charge. I cancelled all those to make sure there will be no charge on my account. Unfortunately within 2 days at June 22, I found one of those companie...

Last night I was returning from a very successful AABEA event in Cafe Dhaka late at night. Shusmita, Ahyan and Nitol was in my car and Shahriar, Shochi and Safwan was in the car ahead of me. At arround 10:45 pm I wass going to take exit at 880 South in Montague Expressway. My intention was to take exit at 880 North which is only 300 feet ahead. As I realized that I am taking the wrong exit, I quickly looked at the left lane and looked over my shoulder and decided that I will come back to the original lane as their is no one to hit me at that lane. But while returning to the lane, I missed to see a small concrete trialngle divider and I directly hit that divider from the right side of my car. Result? The car flew a little and came down to earth and I had to drive around 50 feet to keep the control of the car and stop it at the last edge of the shoulder. Thanks to almighty, none of us were injured. Even the air bag did not come out which means the hit was not as hard as it sounded initi...

I came to know about Geni from FreeBase a while ago. As soon as I saw it, I was amazed. allow people to graphically view and edit family trees. I was looking for such an application for a long time and now I have started my family tree. It will be not only useful and fun but will be a great way to socialize with the relatives. Geni is a tool for understanding and staying in touch with your family. Geni lets you create a family tree through our fun simple interface. You can expand your tree by adding relatives’ email addresses. They will be invited to join your tree and can add other relatives. Your tree will continue to grow as relatives invite other relatives. From a technical point of view, the web site is so great in delivering exactly what a person would like to see in a family tree gradually that I am speechless! I don’t remember any other application stuck me with so surprise probably other than Facebook. What are you waiting for now? Start your family tree in www.geni.com ...

I recall how wonderful this world cup cricket 2007 was for Bangladesh. Life sounds more meaningful at such happy moments. Here is the ccricket hip hop song that Dish network developed for this world cup. Enjoy! ....aaz dekhenge bhai ham ....kisme hey kitna dam chakka mar de, mar de chakka mar de are bare bhai, chakka mar de....

We six engineers from Milpitas Philips R&D team came to visit Philips Lifeline in an official tour. Our flight for San Francisco to Boston airport Monday noon. The flight was only of five hours and we reached at Crown Plaza Natick at 10:30 PM despite the 3 hours time difference. I had a steak with french fries in dinner very late at night in Uno Chicago Grill which was quite tasty! The whole day today (Tuesday) went so busy in Framingham (Lifeline) that I seldom got time to take a breath. In the evening, we came back in hotel for 15 minutes. Ron (Dutch) joined me, Brian, Dan and Jade in our visit to Cambridge and Boston. First we went to MIT campus and then to Harvard which is close by. It was an amazing experience to visit these 2 places. We had dinner at Grandel Den's and again I picked a steak with mash potato. This teak was even tastier than last night's! Before coming back to hotel, we had ice cream from a famous shop there. Update: Wednesday we presented PTS and Mo...

Do you want to know when will you die? Well it can be the very moment when you are reading this post. But let's see what our expert death clock system tells you at http://www.deathclock.com . When I calculated my one, I found it's way more than what I expect. When are you dieing?

Today I recieved an email that I would like to share with my visitors here. In The Name Of Allah, The Most Merciful & The Most Beneficent" " AZAAN " Assalam-o-Alaikum Everyone, Amazing as it sounds, but fortunately, for the Muslims of the world, it is an established fact. Have a look at a map of the world and you will find Indonesia on the eastern side of the earth. The major cities of Indonesia are Java, Sumatra , Borneo and Saibil. As soon as dawn breaks on the eastern side of Saibil, at approximately 5:30 am local time, Fajar Aazaan begins. Thousands of Muazzins in Indonesia begin reciting the Aazaan. The process advances towards West Indonesia. One and a half hours after the Aazaan has been completed in Saibil, it echoes in Jakarta . Sumatra then follows suit and before this auspicious process of calling Aazaan ends in Indonesia, it has already begun in Malaysia. Burma is next in line, and within an hour of its beginning in Jakarta, it reaches Dacca, the cap...

August 6 to 9th, I am visiting Philips Lifeline in an official trip with 5 of my other colleagues. I thought it’s good time to try a travel planner web site now. After looking around for a while I realized that Yahoo Trip Planner is the best that I have found so far. I like Yahoo’s most of the services more than MSN services and only marginally behind Google’s services. But in trip planner application, Google still doesn’t have anything although they are wokring on one. Its so wonderful that I can put all my travel related info in one place and whenever I need any info, I can lookup in my Yahoo Trip Planner. Here is the one that I am using as my first experience on handling travel data. http://travel.yahoo.com/trip-view-1251130-visit_to_framingham_with_colleagues

Last week (07.07.07) the list of New 7 wonders of the world has been declared. Many of us voted his/her choices in the website. Many of us were enthusiastic about the matter, as we all have been listening about the Great 7 wonders of the world since our childhood. Although the ancient and middle-age 7 wonders were nominated by research from UNESCO, modern 7 wonders of the world was based on 100 million votes over internet from all around the world and hence is not part of official research or declaration from UNESCO. Still this is the only declaration of 7 modern wonders of the world. i am particularly thrilled to see Taj Mahal and Great Wall of China in this new list, representing their great economic progression in this flat world. The New 7 wonder foundation has started another campaign, named New 7 wonders of Nature . You can nominate your own choice there. Can't we all try to nominate something from our own this time? May be we don't have something like Pyramid or T...

Saturday 16th May 2007, we attended an excellent concert of Habib accompanied by his father Ferdous Wahid and Milia Sabed in Sunnyvale Convention Center. So many Bangladeshi people gathered together. As far as I know, 600+ tickets were sold of $35, $50 and $100 each. My previous idea was probably around 2000 Bangladeshi lives in San Francisco Bay Area. But now after talking to many people, I got feedback that around 6000 to 7000 is the most probably number. I hardly can remember anyone I know who missed this event. We enjoyed it so much. Habib really does sound engineering as he claimed, and its of a different sort to classify. Ahyan got very used to the noise after his recent A R Rahman's concert experience. People of all ages were dancing from near the seat or close to the stage. Although Habib's full team couldn't come, he made an excellent show by picking all his good songs. Here are few pictures of the concert. And here is a YouTube video of the program.

Yesterday me, Shusmita, Ahyan and Liju went to A R Rahman Live Concert in Oracle Arena, Oakland. The 20,000 audience capacity was almost full with Local Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi people. A R Rahman, Hariharan, Sukhvinder, KS Chitra and a fluent speaking rapper were singing recent and old Hindi and Tamil songs of A R Rahman. The live performances of the singers and various dancers were impressive. I liked the concert so much because I am a big fan of A R Rahman's songs. It was a big test for Ahyan as he was afraid of the sound of loud speakers and peoples voices. Shusmita had to run towards corridor often to control him.

I have a few good and bad news from last week. The bad news first. I got a $361 red light violation ticket by postal mail with $29 processing fee for attending the driving classes as well. I didn't realize I will get this ticket when I was driving back to office from lunch at 2 PM close to my housee in Fremont. When I opened the mail, I found they gave 4 photo snaps as well as an internet link with PIN# to watch the video of how I violated the red light rule. This is California! Everything computerized, you can't deny. This is my first traffic ticket in USA and not an exciting one. :-( Last Friday my manager in Philips cacme back from an Andover visit and amongst many other updates, he informed me that he talked to HR and Finance about my Green Card processing. :-)

This memorial day long weekend was the last weekend before summer and was a perfect candidate for a vacation. I, Shusmita and Ahyan were joined by Nitol and Liju for a Lake Tahoe trip with one night stay in Cal Neva Resort near King's Beach which is in the border of California and Nevada. We started for Lake Tahoe just before noon Saturday. I expected cold as more than a year earlier I came in a winter here with my friend Prakash and it was ice and ice everywhere. But it was warm and green now. We enjoyed the stay in hotel and roaming around Lake Tahoe. At night we went to Reno which is a very small version of Las Vegas. The next morning we checked out at noon and rounded the whole circle of Lake Tahoe stopping in several vista points. Its beautiful... very beautiful... The whole trip Ahyan was very happy but he didn't eat cereals. From our hotel we could see the lake and hills very closely. It was a good driving experience and wonderful vacation!

Well this current week has been full of events. Let me remember in order. Monday night, me, Shabbir, Shusmita and Ahyan went for a half-an-hour grocery shopping in Namaste Plaza. When we came back home, we found the house is full of smokes. Shusmita forgot to switch off one stove and thats why it is. If we would be a little more late, as Liju pointed out when he joined us in dinner the house would be under terrible fire! Tuesday afternoon around 4:30 Shusmita called me and told that Ahyan jumped from bed into the floor. I was in the office and rushed towards home instantly. We took him to Fremont Urgent Care and he seemed to be fine without any injury. Even though we have monitor and pillows around Ahyan, he woke up from sleep and silently crossed the pillows (thats why Shusmita didn't hear anything from the kitchen's monitor) to catch an electric tower fan eventually falling in the floor. However the floor has thick carpet thats why he was not hurt. Same night, some of our fri...

Yesterday, I took Nitol to Napa Valley where me and Shusmita attended a marketing presentation to recieve our vacation package to San Diego. Nitol liked Napa Valley a lot. On the way back we went to San Francisco for a while. After dropping Nitol at his new flat, I came back home tired with 200 miles driven. My car crossed its 10000 miles just 3 days back and serving me quite well. Late at night police knocked our door and asked whether we heard gun shot or someting unusual. We were too tired to hear anything. The cop reported that a boy is shot just opposite to our apartment and the whole area we saw full of polices. Shusmita was excited and scared. After all, we thought we are in one of the safe areas of California. Later today in news we found the mexican boy Aaron boy was shot and later died in hospital. Here are few links. http://www.orovillemr.com/news/bayarea/ci_5782641 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/30/BAG5JPI7LN15.DTL&feed=rss.bayarea

Scientists started finding planets outside our solar system a few years ago. But this is the first time when a planet other than Mars seems to host environment favorable to life. Have a look at this - http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070425/ap_on_sc/habitable_planet

My colleague Gil Lemke always does interesting staffs. Last week he caught me and Jade for being model in his experimental video/photo session. Here is a highly reduced portion of that video he prepared.

Morning today I, Shusmita, Ahyan and Prakash started for Nappa Valley, a place of scenic beauty and famous for producing good wine. The visitor center was a 70 miles drive from my house and we caught the Silverado trail which was another 20 miles. Bliss, the default Windows XP wallpaper is actually the the photograph of one of the hills in Napa Valley. We had lunch in an Italian resturant which was huge in size but not-so-good in taste. Shusmita got some chane to do shopping. The place that we plan to come back again and again is Sterling. We returned home by 8 at night.

While I am working recently with Year 2007 Daylight Savings Issue in USA, this post caught my eyes about day light savings initiative in Bangladesh. http://banglacricket.com/alochona/showthread.php?t=20159

Shusmita had her surgery by Dr. Shakira yesterday successfully. It was a short out-patient one and I took care of Ahyan the whole day until Shusmita started holding him from evening. Alhamdulillah, everything went fine!

This cartoon mimics my state well.

Campaign by NRBs to Help BD Every dollar you send through unofficial channels, that might helps a corrupt culprit to transfer their wealth. This article is aimed specifically to all the non-resident Bangladeshis who are working hard to make a fortune in foreign lands. Almost all of us, except for those who are hiding in foreign lands with their illegally earned money, are very happy about what is going on in Bangladesh during the tenure of current government. In addition to reading the free newspapers on the internet and feeling happy, is there anything that you could do to help Bangladesh? Everybody in Bangladesh is adjusting their lifestyles to match the changed political scenario. NRBs also had to take part in that, though infairly, since the crackdown started on the illegal VoIP businesses. Through this column, we have earlier mentioned that there were alternative ways that the CG could do without harming the NRBs by disconnecting them from their family members. Our guess is that t...